Epistemographer

So, many people are blogging this better than I have the time or knowledge to do, but if you’ve been in a cave today, Atrios was essentially served with a cease and desist letter by blogger Donald Luskin today.
Seems that this might not be about simply stifling criticism, a la Fox v. Franken, but something [...]

I haven’t had much to say for the past few days, in part because I’m trying to focus all my writing energies on my dissertation (which has been growing steadily at the rate of about 1200 words per day, if you’ve been following the little tally to the right). Looks like I’ll be heading to [...]

As if switching up to Movable Type wasn’t enough, Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall now has a modest proposal up on his site:
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to going to New Hampshire in January to cover the primary – probably for the last ten days or so before the actual vote on January [...]

So, the defamation lawsuit against Eminem was ruled in his favor. But here’s the great part:
“In a footnote to a 13-page opinion, Judge Deborah Servitto and her research staff added a 10-stanza rap verse to explain her ruling in a case in which DeAngelo Bailey claims he was defamed in an Eminem song.”
If you’re wondering [...]

Had a bit of technical problems earlier this week over at my Video Store Project site. The trouble (corrupted mySQL index) is cleared up now, but this reminded me that I should mention it here, since many of y’all who’re reading might not know about it. If you’re curious, check it out, and if you [...]

Ahhhh…I seem to have figured out the problem that was tripping up my dissertating. While I’m not entirely positive it hang together perfectly, I’ve got a good enough sense of how to restructure things that I’m able to start writing with a clear destination in mind. At this rate, I’ll have another chapter cranked out [...]

Fascinating story today in Wired News on Amazon’s new book index:
“Amazon’s new archive is more densely populated than the early Web was, but it’s still far from complete. With its 120,000 titles, the archive has about as many books as a big brick-and-mortar store. Still, this is plenty to create a familiar sensation of vertigo [...]

Interesting post by Ted over at Crooked Timber:
“I’ve been fascinated for a long time by this: quite a few black and Latino rappers fill their albums and videos with images of ostentatious, even cartoonish wealth. With the possible exception of Vanilla Ice rolling in his 5.0*, I’ve never seen a white rapper portray his success [...]

I guess I’ve hit the big times, now – just got hit with my first five pieces of comment spam. Within minutes I had Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist plugin up and running, so that should take care of that. Anyone dealing with the same should check it out…

Two days into prepping to write the next dissertation chapter, I’m hitting a brick wall. Since I can’t seem to get anywhere doing “legitimate” writing, I figure I’ll try getting some ideas out here (and anyone reading who’s up on my dissertation, feel free to throw in your two cents).
So here’s my dilemma. The way [...]